Indigenous Crime and Settler Law: White Sovereignty after Empire

Description

In a break from the contemporary focus on the law's response to inter-racial crime, the authors examine the law's approach to the victimization of one Indigenous person by another. Drawing on a wealth of archival material relating to homicides in Australia, they conclude that settlers and Indigenous peoples still live in the shadow of empire.

HEATHER DOUGLAS is a professor at the TC Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. MARK FINNANE is ARC Australian Professorial Fellow and Chief Investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security, Griffith University, Australia.

"Heather Douglas and Mark Finnane expose the myth of 'perfect sovereignty' in Australia in this important book. Their meticulous historical study demonstrates that although, according to international law, the English acquired sovereignty over the entire continent upon settlement...the exertion of sovereignty and the exercise of criminal jurisdiction over Indigenous people has been, in practice, uneven, piecemeal and imperfect." - Tanya Mitchell, Current Issues in Criminal Justice, Volume 25 Number 2